About the Authors

BRENDA MILLER is the author of five essay collections including Season of the Body, Listening Against the Stone and An Earlier Life, which received the Washington State Book Award for Memoir. Her creative nonfiction appears in leading literary journals and has received six Pushcart Prizes. She also coauthored The Pen and the Bell: Mindful Writing in a Busy World with Holly J. Hughes. Brenda is a professor of English at Western Washington University, and associate faculty at the Rainier Writing Workshop. In her spare time, she fosters dogs with Happy Tails Happy Homes, volunteers with Whatcom Hospice, and eats fabulous meals with her colleague Suzanne Paola.

SUZANNE PAOLA is the author of, most recently, Make Me a Mother (W. W. Norton) and the digital chapbook Curious Atoms: A History with Physics. She is also the author of Body Toxic: An Environmental Memoir, A Mind Apart: Travels in a Neurodiverse World, the novella Stolen Moments, and four books of poetry. Awards for her poetry and prose include a New York Times Notable Book, an American Book Award, a Library Journal Best Science Book of the Year, a Lenore Marshall Award finalist, an Oprah Bookshelf pick, and a Pushcart Prize. She lives in Bellingham, Washington, and is the editor-in-chief of the Bellingham Review. She teaches in jails and juvenile facilities with the group Underground Writing, and loves spending time, especially if it’s eating or petting dogs, with her colleague Brenda Miller.